


An Exculpation of Wings

by nennalem (melannen)



Series: Les Mis Crossovers That Should Not Be [8]
Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015), Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Crossover, Ficlet, Fusion, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 10:48:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3765322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melannen/pseuds/nennalem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Valjean is an ex-skyjacker who lost his wings and Javert is a lycantant splice. Because what else is Jupiter Ascending for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Exculpation of Wings

Javert sat slumped on the highest pinnacle of the cathedral, like one more morose gargoyle, staring down into the vast nighttime city below him. The lights were the dim, shadowed, wavery lights of a city that looked inward, hiding itself from the stars: this close to the galactic center, they hung thick and claustrophobic overhead.

A pair of those lights down below were moving more than they should have been, and in a very distinctive pattern. Somebody had a pair of gravity boots and was skating up the side of the cathedral. At the speeds required for a near-vertical climb, it wasn't very long before Javert could make out the distinct white stripes of a Melesovan splice in the skater's hair. He stood up and backed up until he felt the spire's wall behind him. "Valjean," he said, trying for his old menacing growl, not managing.

"Javert," the other splice said, when he'd come level with Javert. He deactivated the gravity boots and dropped a few inches to land on the ledge behind Javert. "When I tracked you here, I thought you might have been planning to jump."

"I was," Javert answered. "I had a plan. I was going to go back to headquarters, and confess to my commander, and then I was going to find a high place and jump as soon as they took my wings away." His great black-feathered wings, the pride of a skyjacker, spread and then mantled behind him restlessly.

"You seem to still have them," Valjean pointed out, unnecessarily. He was looking away over the city, his back turned toward Javert.

Javert tried not to think of the wing-scars that must still be there under Valjean's vest, or the curdled satisfaction he had felt, so many years ago, when he'd watched as Valjean's own wings were torn away by the authority of the Legion. "Yes," Javert said. "I allowed a known criminal to go free and continued hiding his location. I reported to my superior that I had committed a crime and should be court-martialed, but without specific knowledge of my crime, he refusedn to act on my report. And since my crime was knowing the whereabouts of an escaped prisoner who's meant to be dead, to confess to the details of my crime, would rather defeat the purpose of committing it. As it would interfere with your ability to raise your daughter in peace."

"In that case," Valjean said, "You needn't worry. Cosette got married yesterday. To an Entitled. She doesn't need me around any more. She certainly doesn't need the reminder that she was raised by," he curled his lip in disgust, "a lowly splice. So if that's what's brough you here, I suppose I can solve both our problems together." He took a step back, and then-- fell.

He fell like a skyjacker, like the old skyjacker he would always be: with perfect trust, like the height was an old friend, like there could never be any landing. But the wings that should have snapped open to turn the fall into a dance - weren't there. Javert remembered, with the suddenness of a flashback, watching the surveillance footage of Valjean falling once before, falling from a suborbital platform down through endless depths of sky, a fall no-one should have survived, and yet, somehow, he had. He had fallen the same way, then, arms open like he was embracing the air, the long-gone wings so shadowed in his posture that it was hard to believe they weren't there. Javert remembered the slick satisfaction he had felt at the knowledge that the old coward was finally dead, and felt sick.

Valjean hadn't activated the gravity boots. Of course he hadn't. Of course he wouldn't. They were a coarse mockery next to wings. The gravity on this planet wasn't high enough for terminal velocity in its atmosphere to kill him, but it was high enough that the ground certainly would. Javert spat out a curse, and dived after him.

With his wings shoving him down ahead of the fall, he passed Valjean a hundred meters above the ground, and caught him, chest to chest, just in time to slow them both to a stumbling but safe landing, feet on the ground.

"Ah," Valjean said, in a tone of satisfaction, as Javert folded his wings back.

"Valjean. Don't," was all Javert said in reply.


End file.
